Leonard Hoffmann, Baron Hoffmann

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Leonard Hubert "Lenny" Hoffmann, Baron Hoffmann (賀輔明勳爵) (born 1934 in Cape Town, South Africa) is a senior British judge, serving as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.

Born into a Jewish family near Cape Town, Lord Hoffmann was the son of a well-known solicitor. He was educated at Cape Town University and then attended University College, Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar. After being called to the Bar, he became one of the most sought after and highly-priced barristers of his generation and was quickly made a judge. He did the BCL, thought by many to be the leading graduate law degree in the common law world, where he won the Vinerian Scholarship.

His failure to declare his links with Amnesty International before ruling on whether General Pinochet was immune from prosecution led to the unprecedented setting aside of a House of Lords judgement. He later went on to comment "The fact is I'm not biased. I am a lawyer. I do things as a judge. The fact that my wife works as a secretary for Amnesty International is, as far as I am concerned, neither here nor there," he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

In 1995 Hoffmann was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and thereby created a life peer by the title of Baron Hoffmann, of Chedworth in the County of Gloucestershire.

Hoffman is a non-permanent judge of Hong Kong SAR Court of Final Appeal.

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